GIFs are one of the oldest image formats used on the web. Throughout their history, they have served a huge variety of purposes, from functional to entertainment. Now, 25 years after the first GIF was created, they are experiencing an explosion of interest and innovation that is pushing them into the terrain of art. The video from Off Book charts their history, explores the hotbed of GIF creativity on Tumblr, and features two teams of GIF artists who are evolving the form into powerful new visual experiences.

25 year oldDamien Ruddis a student at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT). Says Rudd, “I always try to demonstrate the contrast between what life presently is and what it could be. To immerse ourselves in the oblivion of actions and know we’re making it happen.“

Top, from the series Attraction and Repulsion (2010), Simple illustrated line diagrams have been superimposed over the photographic images to force the viewer to examine the content from a different perspective. The work was inspired by ballet dancer William Forsythe’s piece Human Writes(2005) in which the body becomes a tool to create and manipulate negative space.

The Holland Festival and the Stedelijk Museum jointly present the interactive artwork Your Name in Lights by John Baldessari, one of America’s best-known Conceptual artists. This extraordinary artwork will be installed on Museumplein from June 1 to 26, 2011. Your Name in Lights draws on our society’s obsession with celebrity and recalls Andy Warhol’s oft-quoted statement from 1968, “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.” Inspired by historic markers of show-biz celebrity, such as the neon lights on Broadway and the marquees of Hollywood cinemas, Baldessari offers spectators a chance to seize 15 seconds of fame by presenting their names on a 30-metre L.E.D. screen. Your Name in Lights premiered as the 23rd Kaldor Public Art Project, in collaboration with the 2011 Sydney Festival; its appearance in Amsterdam is the second and only other planned presentation of the work.Register hereand your name will appear in lights at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.

John Baldessari is perhaps best known for his artworks of appropriated photographic imagery that incorporated juxtaposed colorful dots. The dots served two functions in Baldessari’s work; they allowed him to “obliterate” the identifies of people in his found images and also to render them anonymous so they could be seen more as generic types (such as an art curator or an art hustler) rather than specific individuals. But the dots also represented Baldessari’s overall strategy aimed at deflecting the viewer’s gaze from the habitual way of seeing – prompting viewers to look

A new site on tumblr allows you toBaldessari Your Life. Above is my submission (in gif form), borrowing the original gif (sans blue dot) from Mark Portillo. If you want to Baldessari your life, submit here or email your submission here.